Sold mine a year ago... but its replacememt should be here soon! I promise to keep it until I reach Valinor or die this time!

Best game ever!!!!!!

I miss my LOTR

Congrats!

Check for existing threads on the diverter at the back being a POS. You may want to add a rubber piece to help orbit shots divert properly into the Orthanc tower if it hasn't been done already.

I've had mine for about 2 and 1/2 years now, and it's still my favorite game. If I could only keep one of my machines, it would be LOTR. Yes, I play my newer machines more, since they're newer, but there's something about LOTR. It's such a classic. Keefer's rules are fantastic. Gomez' design is great. It's a fast game with a lot of depth. The callouts are great. The music is great. The theme is one of my favorites. The new color DMD is an absolute must. And it's going to look great next to my Hobbit Smaug SE! (Also programmed by Keefer!)

Great game. You'll enjoy playing and adding mods. Here's mine.

IMG_2539.jpg

I had one, had to sell it, along with my tron that I had for only 2 months. LOTR I had for 3 months. Had financial troubles and had no choice. I am finally back to normal and am now wanting to get it back, along with tron! It was an awesome game, and complimented tron very nicely. If you wanted a nice, long strategic game, lotr was it! If I wanted fast paced energy, I played tron! It is amazing that out of all the pins out there, the only ones I want are the ones I already had! I really hope they make lotr ve. I think I will be buying tron first, but lotr will he in my lineup again, and will never leave!

Just joined the club on Monday with a very nice HUO example.

Tuning it up now.

RussMyers

Joining on the first page.

I have a nice LE with mods. Tron and LOTR were my first 2 pin purchases made the same week about 2 years ago. I sold the LOTR as it was nice but when I saw the LE come up for sale and I knew the pin was going to be a long-term keeper I bought the LE.

I'll never come close to finishing the game. Have only destroyed the ring a few times and have been to TABA once.

It's the favorite in my house. Modded to the nines. Epic pin.

LOTR was my first pin, and what a great first pin! Mine came nicely outfitted with LED's, cliffy's, POTD mods and more. I added a shaker motor and I love the way it syncs with the balrog roar during bash balrog and Fellowship mutiball. Highly recommended and really highlights the already excellent gameplay.

We have had ours since about 2008, it was our first machine. It is the only one my wife plays and she is very proud of destroying the ring in 25.83 seconds (on two ball DTR). She was furious with me when I changed the batteries and lost record of her time. She destroys the ring frequently and we can never get rid of this machine.

Great pin, love to play it, looks beautiful and the best theme ever.
I have a HUO in mint condition with some nice mods, Cliffys, Pinbits, Palantir, One ring shooter en Walking Dead. Still have some additional AOME figures I want to add.

After ten years of wanting one, I finally got mine about 6 months ago. Love it, play it almost daily. Just reached TABA for the first time last week!

Quick question for all of you LOTR owners. I find it hard to make the ring shot when you're trying to destroy the ring. The shot has to be just right to make it through the ring. I think it's supposed to be that way because the ring magnet is not activated for this (when using a 1 ball DTR setup). Is this true for the rest of you?

It's the favorite in my house to... it's also the only one in my house at the moment, but who's counting?

Same here, it's hard to make that final shot or two through the center with the magnet not sucking the ball in.

In the club
I don't think I will ever get rid of it, as a matter of fact my daughter told me when she gets married she wants our LOTR as a wedding gift.

Make sure your spinner spins good or it may be really taking a lot of momentum out of the shot.

Wow, actually had to search that as it was hard to believe, but you are correct...

Only my Valinor club!

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/valinor-club

That is a Stern fix for later run games to keep the ball from bouncing off the sword ball lock area.

Here's a topper Matt (Back Alley Creations) and I made together. Hand painted and modeled off of an 'elf sword prop'. Glows blue when you kill orcs(hit the pops), swings if you Boromir-the-shit out of the orcs (hit a bunch of pops within a short period of time). Hit us up if you want one! We are taking orders for them. $200 for glow-only, $250 for swinging/glowing combo.

Definitely look into this.

The actuator on the switch for the spinner will bend down over time and the spinner ends up getting more and more horizontal. Fixed mine recently and ring shots are now smooth like butter.

I have one also. It is the only machine that my brother and I both have. We share the rest of our collection, but that is one that we both enjoy so much we both bought one.

Sadly enough my brother put his name on mine last night (technically this morning) by reaching valinor and destroying any hopes of me getting there first. I think his game finished around 764 million. I have a strange feeling that the batteries might get pulled from the board by accident and the high scores will unfortunately be reset. I can see the future, but am powerless to change it.

Miss this one from time to time. Really different layout from most and as we all know can have some really long ball times.

Shooting for the ring shot to destroy it is one of the most epic things in pinball.

I'm taking real good care of her Starbase.

I don't know if I could ever sell mine. It doesn't hurt that I'm a big fan of anything Tolkien.

Like Starbase says, once you get your shots down, you can get some pretty epic ball times, making for a very long game.

I contemplated selling it for a bit faster game for a very short time. Instead, I made room for a Star Trek, and now I have the best of both worlds!

_{Post edited by Mottwally: Words}

I love being in the club. Had a players LOTR a few years ago and traded it due to its cabinet condition. Last year I stumbled upon a beautiful one with 212 plays in a private collection. It's truly one of my favorite pins.

Made it to taba yesterday with double scoring but don't think it was double scoring. Each time I went through the ring for the various modes it was only awarding 1 mil per (normal)...but couldn't look up to see what was going on after that. Put up a 2nd highest score. Love this game!

Lots of mods are available and I don't have pics of some. Im not even sure the name of the best one. It's a piece of clear acrylic that protects the Arwen plastic when the ball drops off of the PTD. It looks like a little slide that drops to the shire hole.

Here's some pics of a few mods since you asked. The last one I just installed for Christmas.

image-961.jpg

image-143.jpg

image-546.jpg

image-337.jpg

image-93.jpg

image-424.jpg

image-815.jpg

Has anyone installed a plastic shield over the top of the left ramp due to air balls? My game plays fast as hell and I get air balls there a lot. I was going to try and find a pice of plastic to make a shield there today. Maybe Home Depot would have plastic like that?

Home Depot sells small pieces of LEXAN which is ideal. You can cut it with a fine tooth blade and jigsaw.

Here is some info about what some of us have done.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tech-lotr-fast-balls-flying-off-legalos-ramp

Some guys definitely made their own plastics for that problem, the old thread should be around here somewhere. Edit: see ^

Had this issue on my machine, but it resolved itself when I switched back to the regular flipper coils from the PBL LOTR superpowered coils.

I made one of these plastics today. Picked up a small sheet of Lexan at Home Depot and cut it to size and sanded it. I think it turned out really good and now I have no more air balls! Those were driving me nuts!

I highly recommend doing this if you're experiencing air balls on the left ramp.

image.jpg

image-171.jpg

In my collection number 1
As I bought the decals were damaged,
So I made my own

IMG_0034.JPG

DSCN3592.JPG

DSCN3593.JPG

DSCN3594.JPG

IMG_0032.JPG

IMG_0033.JPG

WOW! Impressive.

Awesome, I need this, my mirror blade above the shire looks like it's taken a few grenades going off.

There are some great quality mods for LotR.

Jay's Palantir is a must, as are better speakers.
The shaker kit and the backbox lightning kit from Superfluxshop are other favorites.

Here's a video of the lightning kit in action (it's an old video, in the meantime i've added a lot of mods to the machine):

Here is my balrog votive, just did a write up on it in the thread for the guy having someone trying to sculp another, as well as my custom POTD with figures lit to the switch lights:

20150101_134405_resized.jpg
20150101_134421_resized.jpg
20150101_134444_resized.jpg
20150101_134458_resized.jpg

Great topper! Haven't seen this one. Is it custom? Where did you get it? Thanks.

Pindufus: did you hook yours to only the flasher? I have seen people a while back either hook it to GI or a the flasher, but not both like I did. There is orange GI lighting it, like in the first two photos, and then the red high power with a cone flashlight reflector in the mouth attached to the flasher, like in the last pic.

Took me a total of 10 hours to complete, what a PITA, but man, am I happy with the results.

Can someone tell me all that needs to be done to get to Valinor?

Here's what I "think" it is:

Finish FOTR multiball (what exactly does that entail? How many people cross?
Finish TTT multiball
Finish ROTK multiball (what does this entail? Is it just hit the 4 shots and repeat 7 times? Any strategy here?
Destroy the ring once?
Collect gifts of the elves? How many are there? Six? Or is there some secret ones? Do you have to beat all the modes and all of the multiballs?
Play TABA. You don't have to beat it do you?

Then...how do you start valinor?

1) Complete FOTR MB (All eight members+Gandalf Balrog Strike),
achieve Super Jackpots for an Elf Gift at minimum
2) Complete TTT MB (Survive the Assault to the end, new level every 5
jackpots achieved), achieve Super Jackpots for an Elf Gift at minimum
3) Complete ROTK MB (All Seven Levels), achieve Super Jackpots for an
Elf Gift at minimum
4) Play all 6 Rings Modes (Completion not required)
5) Play There and Back Again (Completion not required)
6) Collect all six Elf Gifts
7) Destroy the Ring (2X Required, or ONCE if you are SUPER SUPER HOT!)

Valinor starts automatically the moment you have destroyed the ring AFTER having achieved goals 1-6 above.
Basically you should play through all the modes before starting the last of the three main multiballs. If you by mistake start all three multiballs without having played all the modes you can back out of "Destroy the Ring" by starting Gollum Multiball (which will change the ring shot from "Destroy the Ring" to "Mode Start" for the time Gollum Multiball is active). This makes sense to go for if you only have one or two modes left to play. If there are to many unplayed modes left it makes more sense to destroy the ring once, finish the modes and play all main mulitballs again.

Sorry - double post.

Thank you for asking - and sadly no answers as yet.
I was just playing mine - same thing. Every ring shot registered for mode start - magnet held the ball, then got to DTR, hit all the lit shots, lit the ring again, and went though that sucker about 5 times scoring 1 mil each time, but no progress towards destroying it. Any ideas?